Generally, a modular jack type connector includes "spring beam contacts" which protrude from a portion of the jack housing into a plug-receiving cavity of the housing, the contacts or terminals usually being separated from each other by molded portions of the housing. The terminals include terminal portions, usually in the form of pins for mating with the terminals of a complementary electrical device. For instance, the terminal pins may form solder tails for insertion into holes in a printed circuit board and for solder connection to circuit traces on the board and/or in the holes. In some instances, the terminal pins or solder tails are arranged in a single row, but in many other instances the terminal pins or solder tails are arranged in two rows of an alternatingly staggered array. The spring beam contacts protrude into the plug-receiving cavity normally in a single row.
As is well known in this art, such modular jack type connectors are quite small or miniaturized and, consequently, the terminals are very closely spaced. Consequently, there exists a never-ending problem of noise or crosstalk between adjacent terminals, particularly in elongated straight/parallel portions of the terminals. Various approaches have been made to eliminate or reduce the crosstalk, such as providing ground planes on the jacks, and coupling filter components, such as capacitor filters, between the terminals and the ground plane. Adding such additional components as ground planes to such miniaturized connectors adds significantly to the costs of the connectors.
These problems further are complicated because of the standards in the telecommunications industry for high data rate transmission over twisted pair cables. In other words, the twisted cables which form the tip and ring wires of the transmission system must be coupled within the jack in a particular order.
The present invention is directed to solving these problems by providing a unique terminal configuration and/or array for reducing crosstalk between the terminals of the jack without adding components such as ground planes to the jack construction.